Books by Pierre Augustin Caron De Beaumarchais

John Wells was born in 1936 and sadly died in January last year. He was an important member of that small but influential group centred around Private Eye magazine and Beyond the Fringe, which included Peter Cook, Richard Ingrams,John Bird, Alan Bennett and Jonathan Miller. He was clever, erudite, entertaining, funny, outrageous and abrasive - not to mention a keen linguist with adeep love of music. He taught French and German at Eton, before going on to co-edit Private Eye, so when Jonathan Miller asked him to translate Beaumarchais' Figaro Plays for a radio production, he was able to fuse a number of hispassions in a single project. It is these texts, revised just before his death, which are published here. It was to be his last book, a fitting tribute to the man and his legacy.Editor Biography John Leigh is a fellow of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, and a specialist in eighteenth-century French literatur